Web 2.0

Politicians have been devising ways to communicate with the public and reach out to their constituencies since the inception of the democratic system. And while each form of new media has given legislators more opportunities to communicate their manifold messages, the communiqué has often been filtered through reporters and the discourse has been decidedly one-sided. Social media, unlike any previous innovation, has fundamentally changed the way voters glean information about public officials. Not only do candidates now have unbridled access to the electorate, but social media also offers voters a way to voice their opinions in an open forum.

Traditionally, a candidate needed to take out ad space in order to deliver a message that wasn’t filtered through a journalist, and aside from an op-ed piece, there was little opportunity for conversation or to gauge the public response. With social media, however, there is no intermediary or barriers of communication. Politicians now have the capacity to justify why they voted for a piece of legislation, elected a certain cabinet member or any other decision in their own words—and voters have the chance to respond. (more…)

Twitter still has yet to confirm but, WebProNews is reporting that Twitter now has more than 100 million + users. The company has thier own tracking service, known as Twellow, a yellow page of Twitter users if you will.

Chris Crum wrote, “In March, the total tweets sent increased 29.8% over February, the largest month-over-month increase since July of last year. User registrations rose 19.3% over February. Tweets sent per registered user jumped almost 20% to 13.4.” (more…)

For as long as many us can remember, Google has been the most visited site on the web. You may recall, that during Christmas & New Years Day, Facebook was the most visited site for the day, but Google quickly took that spot back.

However, HitWise said during March 7 and March 13 Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited site in the US, and the trend looks like it will continue. For the past year, Facebook’s popularity has continued to grow, while Google’s ranking has remained on a stable path. (more…)

Occasionally, we talk about some of the latest Twitter facts to see how much the site is growing. We have seen both the amount of users and the numbers of tweets each month continue to grow, with an occasional slow down. But a new study from Barracuda Labs, a Web security company, shows that not even a third of the users are tweeting.

The study looked at an astonishing 19 million users, and defined a “True Twitter user” as someone who has at least 10 followers, is following 10 others, and has at least 10 tweets. Seems simple, right? Surprisingly, only 21 % of the 19 million were defined at a true user. So 79% of twitter users rarely even use their account! (more…)

AJ Bombers, is a popular burger place in Milwaukee owned by Joe Sorge. On Sunday, Sorge’s sales were up 110% thanks to the new social media application FourSquare. 161 FourSquare users checked into the restaurant at the same time, that’s between 25-35% of Milwakkee’s FourSquare user population.

So what brought 161 FourSquare users to this already popular burger joint? Sorge decided to promote the restaurant with the idea that customers could unlock a Swarm badge, which is awarded to those who check in at a location with at least 50 other users at the same time. (more…)

You are probably saying to yourself, “what is crowdsourcing?” According to Wikipedia, “Crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of Crowd and Outsourcing for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an “open call” to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.”

It’s also a concept that many businesses are taking on. While many are using social media sites like a modern suggestion box, others are actually taking those suggestions and putting them into action. WLS-TV, Chicago’s ABC affiliate took a look at a Chicagoland company which helps people and businesses connect by crowdsourcing. (more…)

In their latest study The Center for Client Retention, found that consumers are more likely to favor companies that not only are on social media sites but those who engage with clients as well. During the the study 55% of consumers said they felt positive about the company while a small 5% acted negative towards companies having social media. The remaining 40% felt neutral.

That’s significant that only 5% feel negative against the use of social media. 22 companies involved with the Fortune 500 provided the survey with critical information on their social media policies to find the difference of consumer expectation. Nearly 27,000 consumers gave the survey feed back on their experiences with social media. (more…)

A few months ago, both Google & Bing launched deals with Twitter that would allow tweets to appear in real-time search results. And while many of us try to compete to get our websites ranked higher for the search engines, now we must also fight to get our tweets ranked higher too.

Luckily Google is no longer keeping that a secret. In a recent article, journalist David Talbot scored an interview with Google’s Amit Singhal. Singhal admitted that like Bing, ranks are based on the number of followers you have, however, it’s not necessarily how many actually followers you have, it’s how reputable those followers actually are. (more…)

We have all at least seen Skype. Oprah uses it to talk with guests from around the world! In case you aren’t familiar with Skype, it’s a free service which allows you to video chat with other Skype users or lets you pay a small fee to call land line and mobile phones worldwide. As of last count, the service had more 527 million users, that’s more than Facebook’s impressive 350 million users.

This week at the Consumer Electronic’s Show, which starts Wednesday in Las Vegas, Skype is expected to show off Skype for your HDTV. Right now the service only works on computers, and several smart phones. So moving it to you television would be a new experience. (more…)